| Pages in topic: [1 2 3] > | Poll: In your opinion, which is the most valuable tip for a beginner in the industry? Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "In your opinion, which is the most valuable tip for a beginner in the industry?".
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Some tips:
1. Get experience by working in-house;
2. As a freelancer don’t lower your rates because you are starting out and have no experience;
3. Get a truly experienced translator to review your translations and pay him/her until you feel you can fly alone
4. There's a good book by Corinne McKay called "How to succeed as a freelance translator". Read it...
5. Specialize.
6. (...)
| | | | Kay Denney 
France
Local time: 20:20
French to English
I'd tell them to find another job. I really don't see any future in translating. NB I don't consider MTPE to be translation.
| | | | Lieven Malaise
Belgium
Local time: 20:20
Member (2020)
French to Dutch
+ ...
There are some other important options missing:
- Start by getting a degree in translation
- Acquire inhouse experience
(Do the 2 above, both, and you are already ahead of the majority of freelance translators)
- Be open-minded
- Ignore the doom-mongerers completely
- Rely on your talent and business instinct
- If you notice you don't have the talent and business instinct necessary, stop wasting your time and go and do something else.
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Baran Keki
Türkiye
Local time: 21:20
Member
English to Turkish
| There might still be some future though | Mar 14 |
Kay Denney wrote:
I'd tell them to find another job. I really don't see any future in translating. NB I don't consider MTPE to be translation.
Don't be so fatalistic. Why not advise them to become 'translation mastermind coaches' to do 'take your translation business to the next level' workshops (charging 199.99 $ per person), harping on the message 'while AI has made great strides, there are certain areas where MT fails miserably and thus human translation is still very much needed' during the whole workshop for the next 10 years?
| | | | | There are too many consultants out there already | Mar 14 |
Baran Keki wrote:
Don't be so fatalistic. Why not advise them to become 'translation mastermind coaches' to do 'take your translation business to the next level' workshops (charging 199.99 $ per person), harping on the message 'while AI has made great strides, there are certain areas where MT fails miserably and thus human translation is still very much needed' during the whole workshop for the next 10 years?
Experienced translators know where MT fails, but it is far more difficult IMHO to see the problems if you are starting from scratch. Like trying to teach Maths when you don't know your multiplication tables and how pi works. Besides, there are loads of consultants out there already. I guess the competition is as quite bad as in translation!
With an aching heart, I told my son recently not to go seriously for translation. Ten years ago, I would have been thrilled at the idea! Three languages, two at native level, a science degree and lots of experience of IT and industry ... (He is trying translation anyway - he is MY son, so he doesn´t just do as I tell him.  ) Maybe, just maybe, he will be able to find a niche in the new language industry, but it will not be anything like the job that I started out on 25+ years ago.
| | | | Zea_Mays
Italy
Local time: 20:20
Member (2009)
English to German
+ ...
Kay Denney wrote:
I'd tell them to find another job.
I'm afraid I would tell them the same.
The direction in which the "industry" is heading was clearly demonstrated at the recent ProZ AI event: Mechanical work, where the "translator" just takes the "best bits" from various machine translations and the main goal is: saving time. (I'm leaving out the "optimising" step through an AI bot - given the current state of the art in this field, this leads mostly to useless results and just wastes time. Next financial bubble to burst).
Ironically, this requires highly skilled people who can spot good translations, only they would be able to do this "selection work". And these are the translators least inclined to work this way. Moreover, as the trend is towards this type of work, there will be fewer and fewer truly skilled people, and the result will be the same as seen with AI bots: poorer and poorer quality.
[Bearbeitet am 2024-03-14 09:45 GMT]
| | | | Baran Keki
Türkiye
Local time: 21:20
Member
English to Turkish
Christine Andersen wrote: Three languages, two at native level, a science degree and lots of experience of IT and industry ... (He is trying translation anyway - he is MY son, so he doesn´t just do as I tell him. ) Maybe, just maybe, he will be able to find a niche in the new language industry, but it will not be anything like the job that I started out on 25+ years ago.
But if his heart is so set on translation, he can still make a go of it and do extremely well for himself in a low-cost country like Peru, Thailand or Turkey, if you can bear to be separated from him 
I guess putting three languages and all that know-how to good use in the privileged Denmark is no longer an option?
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...so that there will be more work in the future left (for me).
| | | | | My son flew the nest long ago ... | Mar 14 |
Baran Keki wrote: Christine Andersen wrote: Three languages, two at native level, a science degree and lots of experience of IT and industry ... (He is trying translation anyway - he is MY son, so he doesn´t just do as I tell him. ) Maybe, just maybe, he will be able to find a niche in the new language industry, but it will not be anything like the job that I started out on 25+ years ago. But if his heart is so set on translation, he can still make a go of it and do extremely well for himself in a low-cost country like Peru, Thailand or Turkey, if you can bear to be separated from him I guess putting three languages and all that know-how to good use in the privileged Denmark is no longer an option?
My son more or less emigrated years ago - he went to the UK to study and only comes back for holidays. Then he found a wife, and now lives in a third country - European and not exactly low cost, but the rates for translation are at the lower end. I still think he will do better to concentrate on his other talents, and suspect it was the mobility and flexibility that attracted him to translation.
| | | | | For inhouse jobs: First of all, develop very high-level networking skills | Mar 14 |
Without a high level of networking skills, no inhouse job will ever happen. The EC and most official bodies only hire those who managed to be well-connected before they applied. If you don't know the right people, you'll never get hired no matter how qualified you are.
| | | | | "Market your services with clients" ? | Mar 14 |
What does "marketing my services with clients" mean? My clients already know I translate. Can anyone give an example?
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writeaway wrote: Without a high level of networking skills, no inhouse job will ever happen. The EC and most official bodies only hire those who managed to be well-connected before they applied. If you don't know the right people, you'll never get hired no matter how qualified you are.
I worked for 20 years as staff translator at an EU institution and before being hired I didn’t know a single soul there. I had to pass a rigorous selection procedure – some pre-selection psychometric tests, followed by a test on EU knowledge, and several written translation tests (in all my working languages: EN, FR, ES and IT/PT) and then an interview. I was included in the so-called reserve list of successful candidates in 5th place and was recruited when the reserve list was about to expire…
| | | | | I'd advise nothing; or rather: just keep working | Mar 14 |
Our company welcomes trainees every now and then, and while I don't get to train them directly (maybe the managers think I'll be too hard on them), I do sometimes edit their translations with no debriefing sessions or anything. What I have noticed is that they are definitly bright but terrible when it comes to translation discipline: the dinosaurs who are no longer working with us were sort of like old-school Google Translate (I'd edit their work without checking what the source said because I k... See more Our company welcomes trainees every now and then, and while I don't get to train them directly (maybe the managers think I'll be too hard on them), I do sometimes edit their translations with no debriefing sessions or anything. What I have noticed is that they are definitly bright but terrible when it comes to translation discipline: the dinosaurs who are no longer working with us were sort of like old-school Google Translate (I'd edit their work without checking what the source said because I knew I coud trust them in that they'd have translated everything; all I had to do was fix lame target language—often as not, it would all be lame), and these guys are like ChatGPT: they are random and out of control, I need to cross-check every sentence. So, the severity of my edits is about the same with their outputs and those of old-timers, but maybe the trend I seem to be noticing is not a coincidence but a valid observation: a new kind of creativity is emerging, which was hardly there before. Translators from before would ruin the market by delivering perfectly machine-like quality and making customers believe that they are no better than machines. These new guys are different, and probably not just in good ways: only a few of them will be capable of building proper discipline. Generation thing: they hate working hard ▲ Collapse
| | | | Maja_K
Germany
Local time: 20:20
Member (2013)
English to Macedonian
+ ...
| I believe writeaway | Mar 14 |
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida wrote: writeaway wrote: Without a high level of networking skills, no inhouse job will ever happen. The EC and most official bodies only hire those who managed to be well-connected before they applied. If you don't know the right people, you'll never get hired no matter how qualified you are. I worked for 20 years as staff translator at an EU institution and before being hired I didn’t know a single soul there. I had to pass a rigorous selection procedure – some pre-selection psychometric tests, followed by a test on EU knowledge, and several written translation tests (in all my working languages: EN, FR, ES and IT/PT) and then an interview. I was included in the so-called reserve list of successful candidates in 5th place and was recruited when the reserve list was about to expire…
Although I have never worked for an EU institution, I kinda believe it's the way how writeaway describes it. @Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida I guess you (and only small number of translators or other professionals) would be an exception to that.
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